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Thursday, November 6, 2014

Commerce

Pixar Animation is returning to its most successful franchise, "Toy Story," for a fourth movie, to be directed by the studio's chief creative officer, John Lasseter.

Walt Disney Co., which owns Pixar, said Thursday during an earnings call that the latest incarnation of "Toy Story" will be released June 16, 2017.

Lasseter told The Times that "Toy Story 4" will be a love story and will pick up where "Toy Story 3" left off, when Woody, Buzz Lightyear and the rest of the series' toy chest of characters were handed down to a little girl named Bonnie. ...

And actually I think doing another Toy Story is fine, as long as there's a story and as long as it's entertaining.

The squeamishness about true artistes never doing sequels is silly anyway. It's really a myth that's never been true, but people believe what they want to believe. Even Walt did a Three Little Pigs sequel.

The difference between making yet another Princess musical, or one more funny animal movie, or Toy Story IV is minimal. (If IV does a billion dollars in gross receipts, trust me, Mr. Lasseter will find yet another story that Pixar "really wants to tell" and we'll be watching Toy Story V before too long.)

These things are all movies of a type, and each of them successful. They all get made because people enjoy watching them ... and studios are in the business of making money. (You do a super hero movie that cleans up, you do ANOTHER super hero movie. Or a singing and dancing animated cartoon, whatever.)

Addendum: Late at night, I screw up posts. (Hell, early in the morning, I screw up posts.) But everything is now fixed.